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Trump loudly and repeatedly proclaims that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia. Yet, beginning in 2015, after Trump announced his presidential bid, there have been 272 documented contacts between the Trump team and Russia-linked operatives. That includes at least 38 face-to-face meetings with those representing our nation’s most dangerous rival. As a result, the Special Counsel investigation obtained indictments, convictions and guilty pleas for 34 people and three companies. Those include several of Trump’s top advisers.

And that’s not the worst of it.

Once Trump assumed office, despite losing the election by nearly 3 million votes, he has taken numerous actions that appear to aid and abet our enemy. To begin, he has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that Russia helped his campaign and interfered in our election despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He invited the Russian ambassador into the Oval Office along with the Russian press while denying US press access to the meeting.

Against long-standing international protocol, Trump attended private meetings with Vladimir Putin with only their personal translators in attendance. In one of their meetings, only Putin’s translator was present. And, afterwards, Trump took extraordinary measures to conceal details of the meetings, even from officials in his own administration. No detailed record of any of his conversations and interactions with Putin exists…at least not outside of Moscow.

In Helsinki, Trump publicly bowed to Putin by accepting his denial of Russian interference in our elections while ignoring the overwhelming evidence obtained by US intelligence agencies. At a G20 meeting in Germany, Trump met with Putin for more than two hours then followed that up with a second private meeting that he denied ever happened. In total, Trump and Putin have conducted at least 5 off-the-record meetings. No one knows how many off-the-record phone conversations they have had.

All of this raises concerns about the official actions Trump has taken for the obvious benefit of Russia.

For example, he verbally attacked NATO and our European allies which, in effect, weakens the greatest counter to Russian aggression. He appeared to kowtow to Russia in the Syrian civil war and the fight against ISIS by allowing Putin to prop up Assad. Despite saying that “nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have,” Trump ignored a congressionally-mandated deadline for imposing sanctions on Russians. Trump withdrew the US from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia, a move that actually benefits Russia, which has been suspected of ignoring the treaty for some time. It also puts all of Europe at greater risk.

Trump has campaigned for Russia’s re-admission to the G8 after Russia was denied participation in the group following its invasion of Ukraine and its occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula. And now we’re learning that Trump apparently held up $250 million in US military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to elicit a Ukrainian investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son – a move intended to get dirt on a 2020 Democratic rival which raises questions about abuse of power and federal election violations. It is also an obvious threat to Ukraine at a time when it’s vulnerable to further Russian aggression.

Add to all of this Trump’s long-standing attempts to build a Trump Tower Moscow, the extraordinary number of purchases of Trump properties by Russian oligarchs and Russian mafia figures, the fact that Russians were running an illegal gambling operation out of a condo one floor below Trump’s living quarters, and rumors that Russian oligarchs backed loans to Trump in 2009 to help him salvage his near-bankrupt organization.

It’s preposterous to believe Trump and his supporters when they dismiss all of the evidence and rumors of collusion between Trump and Russia as mere coincidence. As many have said, “There are no coincidences in politics.”

When Mikhail Gorbachev called an end to the Cold War, President George H. W. Bush agreed that there would be no expansion of NATO. Bush also agreed that, following the reunification of Germany, NATO troops and weapons would not be permitted on former East German soil. This was not only necessary to ensure the security of the Russian Federation. In part, it was to prevent a reunified Germany from ever posing a danger to Russia again. After all, the Soviet Union lost more than 20 million of its citizens during World War II.

The agreement was short-lived.

Almost immediately, NATO expanded into the former East Germany. Then, during the Clinton administration, NATO expanded into the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Then George W. Bush pushed NATO to expand into Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania and Croatia. In addition, Cyprus, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro have considered membership. And, before the end of his second term, Bush made it clear that he wanted Georgia and the Ukraine to join NATO, as well.

This expansion of Russia’s former enemy into nations that were once part of its Warsaw Pact has led Putin and the Russian government to distrust the ultimate goals of NATO, Europe and the US. Add the Bush/Cheney doctrine of pre-emptive war along with Bush’s assertion that the US has the right to use nuclear weapons, and Russians have reason to question our intentions. At the same time, the US has continued to develop and deploy our National Missile Defense (NMD) throughout Europe. Even though it is called a “defense” system, Russians see it differently. They view it as making a first strike survivable.

The NMD is unlikely to be capable of intercepting a massive first strike by Russia. On the other hand, it could more reasonably be seen as capable of intercepting a much smaller retaliatory strike by Russia following a first strike by the US. In other words, it very much upsets the balance of power. Combined with the US thirst for oil which has led us to interfere with governments around the globe, and you can easily see why Putin would be unwilling to see its long-time partner nation, the Ukraine, move away from Russia and join the European Union. Even worse, Russia would lose its naval base at Sebastopol, Crimea, which is home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

If you still think this crisis is the result of the Obama administration’s “weak” foreign policy, consider this: What if “independence” groups in Canada or Mexico suddenly took control of the government and formed an alliance with Russia? And what if they signed a treaty of mutual protection? What then? Would you support your neighbors? Or would you demand that the US do something to stop it?